Arresting a Man...?
Arresting a man...? The moment she snapped back to her senses, Chaewon noona bristled like a wild animal. Her younger brother was completely surrounded by their classmates. Every last one of them had flushed faces like ripe apples, bombarding Shinwoo with all sorts of pointless questions.
“D-do you… treat the rest of your family this kindly too?”
“I’m making an effort to,” Shinwoo replied.
“We’re not making you uncomfortable by swarming you like this, are we…?”
“Not at all. You’re all noona’s friends anyway.”
They were all having an actual conversation with a man. Even the girls who usually only dated each other were in on it.
“C-can I touch you?”
Then came the question that crossed every line. A female student who had decided her life was worth risking if it meant making a request of a man. It was like dumping ice water over the pleasant atmosphere. The other classmates looked at the girl who had asked with worried eyes.
But Shinwoo simply took the hand she had cautiously extended, as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
“You mean a handshake, right? Of course.”
“What…”
“Huh?!”
“S-Shinwoo!”
The reaction was explosive. The girl who had shaken his hand stared down at her right hand in disbelief. Then she began to lick it with obscene, ice-cream-like strokes. The rest of the girls watched with open envy. The ones who had been blankly observing the scene quickly decided to seize the opportunity. They formed a perfectly orderly line for handshakes in the blink of an eye.
But they were getting ahead of themselves.
“The bell for class rang a while ago.”
“Ah, Vice President…”
“Everyone back to your classrooms. Right now.”
Chaewon noona stood between Shinwoo and the line of girls with lifeless eyes. Faced with the Vice President’s bloodthirsty expression that had gone deathly pale, the girls had no choice but to obey, even if it tasted like bitter mustard. Especially the girl who had been licking the hand she shook with Shinwoo.
‘You. We’ll talk later.’
Chaewon noona mouthed the words silently, but the girl who understood trembled like a mouse before a cat.
While watching his sister, Shinwoo suddenly glanced behind him. Yoo Duhak, who had tried to show off the difference in status only to experience the real gap and receive a brutal shock, was on the phone with someone. The moment the call ended, he looked toward Shinwoo with a sinister smile.
“You’re in big trouble now!”
“What?”
“I just called the police!”
Yoo Duhak shouted fiercely, like it was his final act of defiance. Shinwoo’s reaction was indifferent, but the expression on Chaewon noona’s face beside him crumpled rapidly.
It wasn’t quite murder, but Shinwoo had still assaulted a man. He had injured him badly enough to draw blood. At minimum, it meant life imprisonment. In the worst case, summary execution on the spot when the law was enforced.
“Chaewon noona?”
“This is bad. I should at least tell Mom…”
Chaewon noona couldn’t come up with any clever ideas, so she tried to ask their mother for help. But the report made to the police station was for a male assault case—one of the gravest crimes recognized worldwide. Less than a minute after Yoo Duhak hung up, the sound of helicopter rotors could be heard near the school.
The hallway fell deathly silent, like the calm before a storm. Then, smashing through the windows, a police tactical unit fully armed in bulletproof gear burst into the school building. They crossed the stairs, poured out of the classrooms, and surrounded Shinwoo’s group in an instant. Every gun barrel was pointed at the two people who appeared to be at the center of the incident.
Yoo Duhak cackled as he shoved away the tactical officer trying to support him and shouted like he was giving orders.
“Shoot! I said shoot! Kill them all!”
Chaewon noona realized she might actually die and her lips trembled. But Shinwoo calmly reassured his sister.
“It’s okay, noona. Nothing bad is going to happen.”
Seeing her younger brother’s gentle smile, Han Chaewon steadied her breathing. Even in this situation, though, she couldn’t stop her heart from pounding wildly at the hand that still held hers.
Meanwhile, Shinwoo carefully observed his surroundings. As expected of a country with such high security priority, every member of the tactical unit was equipped with top-tier gear. On the other hand, he was bare-handed. No escape route came to mind.
Yoo Duhak, realizing this, laughed obscenely.
“Hehehe! Serves you right! Police! Hurry up and shoot him dead!”
But the tactical unit had only been surrounding them since earlier. They weren’t doing anything else. Frustrated, Yoo Duhak screamed at them. Still, the officers didn’t move a muscle. More precisely, they couldn’t.
Normally, under the Male Protection Act, a woman who injured a man would be executed on the spot. At the very least, she would be dragged away, crippled, and given a life sentence. That was the absolute rule in this world.
But that only applied when the perpetrator was female.
“C-Captain…”
“Yeah… that… is definitely a man…”
“Right?!”
They had rushed to what they thought was a crime scene, only to arrive at a mysterious one. A man hitting another man. Were men even creatures capable of fighting in the first place? In this situation, there was nothing a mere police tactical unit could do. They simply lacked the authority. It was such an unprecedented incident that it seemed to require investigation by a higher national agency.
“For now… nobody move. If we make the wrong move, we could all be executed together…”
The tactical captain gave the order through her radio from inside the bulletproof helmet she wore for head protection. Even she hadn’t believed it at first. No, she couldn’t believe it. But the more she looked, the more obvious it became—this was a physique overflowing with masculine beauty that could never come from a woman. Thanks to Yoo Duhak, Shinwoo’s upper body was exposed, and she swallowed hard while staring at it. Still, she had no choice but to issue the command to her entire unit.
“All personnel. Lower your weapons immediately. Do not be rude.”
“Captain?”
“It would be disrespectful to the gentleman.”
“…Yes?!”
The officers behind the front line who had been surrounding Shinwoo had assumed he was a woman disguised as a man. But once they removed their stuffy helmets, they saw the boy’s true form. That slender yet powerfully muscular body—like something out of a movie CGI. They began tying themselves up with the restraints they had brought to arrest him.
Still, they were police officers, after all. They couldn’t lose their minds and do anything inappropriate.
Shinwoo tilted his head in confusion as the tactical unit suddenly disarmed themselves and fell into despair without him doing anything. Only Chaewon noona’s tense face twisted into a scowl.
The police helicopters that had been deployed, knowing the danger, lowered their altitude recklessly and hovered precariously beside the school’s third floor. Several of them even scraped against the school wall, damaging their rotors and crashing to the ground.
Boom!
Yet the pilots and officers who emerged, bleeding profusely, all wore satisfied smiles. A mere helicopter or their lives—if it was the price of seeing that, it was a bargain.
Meanwhile, Yoo Duhak was throwing a tantrum, demanding to know why they weren’t killing anyone. Ignoring him, the tactical captain, Ha Min-ah, emerged from between the surrounding officers. She removed her helmet, letting her long brown hair flow freely. Feeling the gaze of Shinwoo staring at her, she couldn’t bring herself to look directly at him. Instead, she stood in front of the female student beside the man—Chaewon noona—erased the deep blush from her face, and returned to her usual cold expression before extending her hand.
“Nice to meet you. I am Police Captain Ha Min-ah, commander of the Eunpyeong District Tactical Unit.”
“Ah, yes. I’m…”
“Han Shinwoo. Could we clear up the misunderstanding first?”
At that moment, the surrounding tactical officers were so shocked their legs gave out and they fell on their backsides. Shinwoo, as the party involved, stepped forward. He intercepted the hand Captain Ha Min-ah had offered to Chaewon noona and shook it instead. This was already the second time today he had shaken hands with a woman his sister didn’t know.
“May we talk?”
“…Pardon? Ah, I… um, that is…”
Chaewon noona snatched Shinwoo’s hand away with a pout, her eyes sharp as axes. Shinwoo was suddenly flustered by his sister’s seemingly angry expression.
On the other hand, Captain Ha Min-ah was a veteran with over ten years on the force, yet her face turned bright red and she couldn’t maintain her composure. After all, he was a criminal… or rather, a gentleman!
“A-amazing…! I shook hands with a man… with a man…!”
The moment the tactical captain, who had just passed thirty and could beat criminals to death with her bare hands, reverted into a lovestruck teenage girl.
“Captain! Why do you get to do it alone?!”
“If that’s how it is, trade with us!”
“That’s so unfair!”
It didn’t matter how her subordinates jeered. She had obtained enough drinking stories to last a lifetime. Captain Ha Min-ah looked at Shinwoo with the happiest face in the world. Then, like a shy maiden, she made a request.
“U-um… sir? Could you possibly accompany us to the station? We have to follow procedure, you see…”
The tactical captain twisted her body and even covered her lips with the back of her hand. Her subordinates looked like they were about to vomit. But the embarrassed woman suddenly sharpened her eyes. Noticing Chaewon noona’s extremely sensitive and bloodthirsty purple gaze, she quickly tore her attention away from Shinwoo. It was a look intense enough to make even the tactical captain back down.
“Shall we continue this at the station? Properly?”
“S-shall we do that?”
Shinwoo let out a sigh of relief. Considering the number of officers deployed, things seemed to have resolved rather smoothly. Once the situation calmed, he obediently held out both arms to be taken in. However, none of the approaching officers dared to put handcuffs on the man’s wrists. They kept glancing at each other with expressions on the verge of tears. These were the same people who usually beat down women throwing soju bottles at protests.
In the end, Shinwoo had to ask the unit for the handcuffs and put them on himself before boarding the armored vehicle.
Even during the ride, something felt strangely off. Chaewon noona couldn’t ride in the same vehicle as his guardian, so she had said she would come with Captain Ha Min-ah’s car from earlier. Thanks to that, Shinwoo was traveling with tactical officers he didn’t know.
Normally, during prisoner transport, tactical units would constantly intimidate captured criminals to prevent any resistance. But these women were different. They were beyond quiet—they were all in a state of panic.
“Namu Amitabha, Namu Amitabha.”
The officer sitting to Shinwoo’s right suddenly began chanting a Buddhist sutra, trying her best not to look his way. The one on his left was the same. When the armored vehicle turned a corner and Shinwoo’s shoulder bumped into her, the brave tactical officer immediately dropped to her knees and begged.
“I’m sorry! I’m so sorry! I accidentally bumped into a man’s shoulder! Please spare me! Please spare me!”
“Please calm down!”
And then there was the driver, who had been checking the rearview mirror three times every ten seconds since they started driving. At first Shinwoo let it slide, but it was happening far too often. Perhaps the ominous feeling had been right.
Bang!
Just moving through the city center with helicopters was burdensome enough, yet now they had caused a traffic accident. Watching the female officer who caused it, Shinwoo seriously began to question whether this country truly had good public security.
‘Is this place… really known for having excellent security?’